why i don't like the Amazing Race

For the past five seasons The Amazing Race has been the one show that Sandy and I have looked forward to watching each season. It has been fun to watch, and a quality show. I loved seeing all of the places that the teams went to across the globe and see how they interact with different cultures and people. Often enough we see the "Ugly American", but we also saw some grace and humbleness from the contestants.

This season was a breeak from all of that. It is the "Family Edition" and it stinks! This time around we have families of four instead of teams of two and after four weeks the teams are only in Mississippi. That's right, rather than being in Iceland or Chechnya or China, they are in the foreign land of Mississippi. In the second episode they were only just in New Jersey after starting on Manhatten.

Weak!

Sandy has already dropped the show because it is so hard to follow the teams and really figure out who they are and the real thing is that the challenges kind of suck. They had to row across the Delaware river and grab a flag, ooh! They had to ride a weird 4 person bike around a race track. Ooh! They have to drive 12 miles in America to find a building that is shaped like a shoe. Ooh! If that last challenge was on a dirt road in Kenya where there are lions walking by that would be different. It is all about the context, but the challenges are still weak. No walking across a high wire or climbing down a castle or bungie jumping? I know, there is a team with kids along, but c'mon now. The program has built itself a reputation and I applaud the show being daring and trying this new thing but it's messing with something that has won Emmys for a very good reason.

I might make it another episode or two, but I'm really close to cutting this season loose and recording Commander in Chief instead.

In other news: I watched another episode of Firefly last night. Good stuff. That's all I wanted to say. I'm 30 minutes through the episode "Our Mrs Reynolds" and I continued to be impressed by the quality here, how good the writing is, and how much I've already come to care about the characters.